thinkingParticles 6 Subscription Drop 5 releases today!

VolumeBreaker new Clustering effect - Paint and Smash ‘em!

ShapeNoise - Deformation at your command!

FlowEmitter new Particles Generator for fluid simulation.

ParticleLight effects - Own it ! Procedural controls.

HydroField flow ‘collisions’ and realistic foaming effects

Victoria, BC, April 11, 2017 - cebas Visual Technology Inc. announces the release of thinkingParticles version 6 Subscription Drop 5 today. Valued Users can immediately download and avail to the many new and powerful operators and enhancements from their Cebas Product Manager. Unbelievable new workflow and production tools. And there is more.

Once more again, Cebas development team has delivered powerful new Operators and enhancements to our most valued VFX artists as they have demanded for greater complexity and ease of use. Our mission is to begin 2017 with a big bang of particles! The last year has seen greater interest developing in Asia and the Middle-East for thinkingParticles, from new users as well as VFX students around the world.

For this second quarter, Drop 5 gears to greater heights, along the TP visual logic track, with less trial and error. Everything is built-in, giving Visual Effects Artists in professional pipelines the complete ease of quick controls and most of all, the high standards of creative realism for every scene you can imagine.

Drop 5 Main New Operators :

VolumeBreaker: paint and smash

VB Clustering gives you the flexibility to set fragment particles into different breakage cluster and make them appear more natural or have specific patterns.

The introduction of a breakable map allows for more creativity in deciding which areas should undergo a destruction. Procedurally-created volumeBreaker cells can be now merged with an existing raster to get a more homogenous look to the fragments.

VolumeBreaker TextureMap Clustering effects

Fragment activation can either be controlled by ‘particles (group)’ or ‘helper objects’ and a new control, by ‘threshold’, which is a multiplied control using particle size or object size, and this allows for more granular control of activation distances. A 2D (surface) breaking mode has also been added to volumeBreaker as well.

ShapeNoise : deformation at your command!

Call it procedural deformation if you will, with this new addition, ShapeNoise Operator gives you the power to add a deformation to any particle shape’s area and edges. This operator offers many features to control and modify how a particle shape (mesh) can be displaced or changed in a way that enhances the look and feel of a VB broken mesh debris, right to each and every particle. While the main function of this operator is to work in conjunction with volumeBreaker, it may also be used with any type of particle mesh including fluids or instanced geometry.

FlowEmitter: consistency and flexibility in fluid effects

FlowEmitter resolves a current effects challenge in the market, that is how to achieve constant flow of fluid particle effects in an animation. With TP 6.5’s FlowEmitter, even with changes in the rate of particles generated, constant flow is now achieved, while preserving the distance between each particle. Visually, the FlowEmitter gives producers and the VFX artists a quick and powerful operator to create and modify realistic flowing or pouring effects in liquid simulations.

FlowEmitter 'glucking' effects at its best!

By itself, the FlowEmitter serves as an all-purpose particle generator. As well as it resolves a key issue in many SPH particle fluid simulations namely, the visible banding or layering when particles are emitted at differing or changing rates. The new ‘Glucking’ parameter in FlowEmitter creates physically-accurate animation of moving liquid gushing and splashing out of overturned containers as they move around - you will be surprise how easy it is to create similar visual effects now.

ParticleLight: Omni lighting with shadows

PLight - for a visual artist, lights play an important role in any animation or visual effects setup. Controlling lights is key to making awesome shots and creating depth and character in visuals. Now, thinkingParticles 6.5 will give you the power to control lights in a 3d scene, in more than one way. The PLight Operator can turn any particle into a real Omni light type along with proper shadow casting.

There are several amazing helpers attached to PLight for fast and easy controls including ColorGradient, a useful node to control lights and materials through procedural setups. You can also control the light animation or distribution with distance and velocity values.

HydroField flow ‘collisions’ and realistic foaming effects

ThinkingParticles 6.5 enhanced HydroField means more Fluid and Rigid Body ‘collisions’ with much better buoyancy and interaction. Physically-accurate transfer of momentum between fluid particles and rigid bodies is resolved and can be seen in real time simulation. The enhanced Multi-Physics Objects engulfed within a fluid will start to rise or sink depending on their specific physical properties, and all these values are adjustable in more than several ways.

HydroField is also enhanced with a new impact behavior for splashes. Splashes can now be used to create Hydrofield surface interactions and splash particles can be used to add volume to a Hydrofield. To learn more click HERE

Quick review of some of the Drop 5 enhancements

NodeAttribute - this new operator offers a powerful method to setup a complex Visual Effects scene and let users modify it without touching the thinkingParticles user interface at all. It offers a new way for TP FX artists to integrate the modeling and animation team into the process of creating visual effects.

GeomContact - this has been further enhanced and now supports Material ID as a filter to restrict the output generation of GeomContact. Control is via faces and whenever there is the same material ID, GeomContact is activated.

GeomPoint helper has been enhanced and now offers Barycentric face coordinates as an additional output.

LayerToParticle's / PGroup option can now be accessed by MaxScript.
Support for Rolling Friction for Bullet Rigid Body and Floor objects has been added.